Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired and success achieved. — Helen Keller

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The most important thing we have to do first of all in a war with the U.S., I firmly believe, is to fiercely attack and destroy the U.S. main fleet at the outset of the war so that the morale of the U.S. Navy and her people goes down to such an extent that it cannot be recovered. - Isoroku Yamamoto

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Anyone who has seen the auto factories in Detroit and the oil fields in Texas knows that Japan lacks the national power for a naval race with America. - Isoroku Yamamoto

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A military man can scarcely pride himself on having smitten a sleeping enemy; it is more a matter of shame, simply, for the one smitten. Isoroku Yamamoto

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People who don't gamble aren't worth talking to. - Isoroku Yamamoto

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To be haunted by past failures or satisfied with past successes is to arrest forward motion. ― Conrad Hilton

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Should hostilities once break out between Japan and the United States, it is not enough that we take Guam and the Philippines, nor even Hawaii and San Francisco. We would have to march into Washington and sign the treaty in the White House. - Isoroku Yamamoto

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No writer in our time has been more isolated than Kafka, and yet few have achieved communication as well as he did.

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I was once the captain of Akagi, and it is with heartfelt regret that I must now order that she be sunk. - Isoroku Yamamoto

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I sincerely desire to be appointed Commander in Chief of the air fleet to attack Pearl Harbor so that I may personally command that attack force. - Isoroku Yamamoto

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